What has old age given you and what has it taken away?
What’s the best adaptation you’ve made? What’s the adaptation you should make but haven’t been able to?
What are you afraid of? What are you grateful for?
We’ve all taken different journeys since Yale, but we’ve all arrived at the same place. We’re old!
I don’t know about you, but count me surprised, perplexed and fascinated by old age. Not just mine. Our generation’s. Weren’t we supposed to stay “forever young”? Weren’t we supposed to make the world a better place? How’s that working out?
Let’s talk about getting old – online now, in person at the reunion. Take a stab at any of those questions above. Or weigh in with other thoughts. On this topic, we’re all experts.
Mark Johnson, Berkeley 1970
May 6, 2025
I made multiple trips from Mt Vernon, Wa to New Haven for college and other adventures in my 1968 Chevy Camaro. But like my old car, things wear out. 16 cross country trips in total.
I have just undergone open heart surgery to repair my mitral and tricuspid valves. Fortunately, very successful and am recovering well.
I won’t make our 55th anniversary but anticipate that this will prolong my life for years to come and look forward to joining all for our 60th.
Driving my 68 Camaro from Mt. Vernon, Wa to New Haven gave me a great opportunity to see how vast and beautiful our country is. I ultimately made 16 trips from coast to coast always with another passenger so we could drive tank fulls of gas before pulling over for a rest stop
Well, just like my old Camaro, things start to wear out.
I have recently undergone open heart surgery to repair my mitral and tricuspid valves. Fortunately, it has been very successful and I’m grateful for that.
I will not be attending our 55th reunion but hopefully I have been given a new lease on life to be ready for our 60th.
– Things I’ve lost – stamina, strength, and recently (just now, courtesy of the current Administration’s policies and incompetence) I’ve lost 20% of my portfolio, give or take.
– Small adaptations #1 that have helped – Lots of walking 2-5 miles at a go, 3 times a week. Also biking on my sturdy E-bike. Also, some hiking. Plus my kids gave me a Garmin watch that tracks my walks, biking, hiking, along with heart rate, and so on …. and sends the data to my iPhone that then sends the data to an app (Strava) that resides on a few close relatives’ iPhones in our family so we can each see what the other person is doing exercise-wise. A great use of social media.
– Another small adaptation #2 that’s helped – an app named Merlin from the Cornell university school of ornithology, with all you want to know to identify birds. I love it.
– A final adaptation #3 – I say “yes” as often as I can manage
– Grateful: Am grateful for my wife of 51 yrs who left her home in Denmark to join me in the US. And, am grateful for our two sons, in Seattle and Denver. And, of course for our lively grandkids.
– Afraid? Yes. First, I’m afraid of being afraid. I don’t want to be like that. It’ll take a beer to think that through. I also don’t want my family to worry about my worrying about this, of course. Second, I’m afraid and distressed about our country’s direction. Dealing with that will take a whole neighborhood bar’s supply of beer to deal with. Or something. Finally, I don’t want to lose the feeling like I’m living life to its fullest.
Following is my comment “about aging”, as I also wrote in the Survey.
====================
Getting older sucks.
Yup, that’s what they say.
Yup, that’s what I hear.
I’m not lookin’ forward to it.
🙂
====================
I think old age is a state of mind. I confess I’m not there yet. Since I’m still working full time (albeit being on sabbatical is not exactly working), I am deferring even thinking about getting old. There are plenty of signs — I can’t believe the 200 yard drive seems aspirational rather than something to be exceeded by many yards — and of course a wife who constantly reminds me that I’m either hard of hearing or not listening to her — but having one’s head in the sand has certain benefits. Still I look in the mirror and wonder who is looking back.
My mother died one year ago just shy of 102 — and with most of her wits until the very end — and that does affect my continuing to work since, right or wrong, it seems that there is still time to relax and meditate.
I just came from a second night of Passover at my sister’s with all of my brother-in-law’s fellow molecular biologists at MIT. They have just had their grant funding cut dramatically even though what they are working on has nothing to do with DEI or sociology or anything other than cancer research. They hope this is temporary — until the midterms – or until Amy Conan Bryant saves us all by a 5th vote that somehow causes Trump to stop our descent into 1933 German authoritarianism. Our table mate observed that until 1933, Germany was headed toward dominating the world in science for the rest of the century. The potential impact of the current anti-elite-universities and anti-elitism in general is already causing top international students to go to China or Europe rather than the U.S. I hope this can be reversed before the damage becomes irreversible.
On the other hand, I’m very lucky to be hanging out on my sabbatical at Magdalene and Pembroke Colleges in Cambridge and at the Arnold Arboretum when I’m in Boston. The world is a beautiful place, and maybe getting ‘older’ gives us perspective and more time to appreciate what we have.
I find myself these evenings with my spouse of 56 years rotating between streaming present day socio-political commentary, PBS historical documentaries and fiction (e.g. Masterpiece). Doing so is bittersweet. It catches me up with the world and human history I avoided as a pre-med undergrad. It, along with “investigative journalism”, has also destroyed my childhood idealized images of past heroes. Those include JFK, Thomas Jefferson, Lindberg, among so many others. It makes me long for what I have lost of my youth.
When you are old, you have time to travel. This September we were in northern Spain, and when you go there you can’t help but be touched by “el Camino”. This is the name for the pilgrimage to Santiego de Compostela, begun in the late 800’s, where the bones of the apostle St. James are reputed to be buried. Its popularity exploded recently due to the popularity of the film “The Way” starring Martin Sheen.
Today hundreds of thousands, of all ages and from all over the world, travel the minimum 100 km necessary to be certified as a true pilgrim. These pilgrims who are “walking the walk” great each other with a simple phrase redolent with the spirit of this personal journey: “Buen Camino”.
Since we are all on a journey (blah, blah, blah) I wanted to see if there was any value or magic in this pilgrimage for someone (me) at this stage of the journey. So, I tried it.
Well, the experience is primal and visceral. It engages all of your senses. It is boring and exhausting yet exhilarating and uplifting. There is an energy when you share the way with others – all in different stages, all with unspoken purposes of their own. I found it significant that this energy can, and does, happen within the very ordinary experience of putting one foot in front of the other. One feels the ineffable aspirations of others. That awareness buoys me and keeps me bobbing on life’s uncertain currents.
We did speak to some pilgrims. The original requirement to be “certified” that a pilgrim have a religious or spiritual purpose. Today it is met, more often than not, with a wink and a nod. I chatted with a vibrant twenty-five year old vixen from New Zealand with two mesmerized males in tow. A wink and a nod there, and “Buen Camino”, indeed!
And we did reach the church in Santiago de Compostela. Here is where the trip gets “certified” if you’re a true pilgrim. Here where you see the saint’s bones if you’re a true believer. Here where you get to celebrate if you fulfilled your purpose. Mission accomplished! It’s kind of like a retirement party!
It is here, too, where you might feel a tap on the shoulder. There is actually another leg to the journey. One that you must make, that you cannot avoid. We are on that leg. It is older than the Camino and goes back to pagan times, to ancient times. Before there was a Camino, there was a pilgrimage to the edge of the world, to the wild coast of Galicia where the world ends. There is a primal pull to this uncharted sea, to this endless horizon. It is a road less traveled. It is a lonelier road. When you get there, you’ll look out at the wide-wine dark, unable to see or know beyond the horizon, say some words to the darkness…. But may there be many miles before we sleep.
Buen Camino
I did not feel old until I retired after 44 years in emergency medicine. A glutton for punishment? Maybe, but this place to stand gave me opportunities for intervening in our culture which I would not have otherwise had. Grand or small? Our judgement of how large or small our contributions are is flawed by myopia. In retirement, I enjoy the freedom of time but also feel a little like the character in Sartre’s screenplay “Les Juex Sont Fait” in which the character is given a chance to rest after he is killed on the barricades in Paris, but he cannot resist returning. I am having a great time on call to MN legislators to explain the politics and science of medicine when they ask. I am still teaching mere mortals [& police] how to drive on race tracks without crashing, under control. In my youth and middle adulthood I was a standout athlete. Now I have caught up with my father’s nemesis: polymalgia rheumatica – and I can walk only slowly. The floor is much farther away. Still, I walk. “Eo, ergo sum.” This phase of my life is much easier. I had an opportunity to raise kids alone, due to a BRCA2 mutation which my daughter does not carry. There are some years & eras I hardly remember. I do fear the inability to walk, which may find me. I am frustrated to find so little written by my ancestors, and I am determined to write enough to offer some glimpses of what this life looked like.
I hope to be allowed to donate a bible and community quilt to the New Haven Museum – celebrating a great great grandfather [Gustavus Vasa Maxham] who was the guy in charge of the New Haven Unitarian Church in 1859.
When my brain ceases to function, I will no longer have opinions. Do swap stoies with all of us at the reunion!
Other thoughts – why I’m maintaining a degree of optimism –
History is cyclic. At times it moves far too quickly, at times excruciatingly slow. I have confidence in the young, that they will advocate for their future, including the environment, the economy, healthcare, and inequity. It might take a while to happen. As for the immediate future, I have always said that extremists inevitably over play their hand. The upcoming congressional elections have the potential to slow, maybe even reverse, the MAGA madness.
As for my profession, medicine, I sense an increasing public dissatisfaction with much of healthcare – access, cost, and the subliminal yet pervasive anonymity of care provision. Whether change in that area comes quickly or gradually remains to be seen.
Hugh Spitzer
What has old age given you and what has it taken away?
It has given me perspective and an opportunity to relax (a bit). As it happens, it seems to have taken away my ability to hike more than three or four miles, and my physicians won’t let me ride a bike or ski for fear of breaking something. 🙂
What’s the best adaptation you’ve made? What’s the adaptation you should make but haven’t been able to?
I’m taking a nap every day. That’s definitely the best adaption.
What are you afraid of? What are you grateful for?
I’m mainly afraid of the collapse of the environment world wide and its effect on the international economy and our children’s and grandchildren’s lives.
We’ve all taken different journeys since Yale, but we’ve all arrived at the same place. We’re old!
Relatively speaking. But “old” gets older all the time.
I don’t know about you, but count me surprised, perplexed and fascinated by old age. Not just mine. Our generation’s. Weren’t we supposed to stay “forever young”? Weren’t we supposed to make the world a better place? How’s that working out?
So far so good.
Let’s talk about getting old – online now, in person at the reunion. Take a stab at any of those questions above. Or weigh in with other thoughts. On this topic, we’re all experts.
Thank you! — Hugh
What has old age given you?
Additional Yale reunions! As a psychiatrist, I felt honored to get to know my patients to the depth that I did. But I found that retirement provided, somewhat unexpectedly, welcomed relief from having substantial responsibility for patients’ lives, being on-call, and having the ongoing risk of being sued for malpractice, deservedly so or not. Additionally, being liberated from having to devote considerable time to the medical literature has allowed me to revisit the classics that I read as an English major.
What has it taken away?
With aging, I’ve experienced the loss of treasured family members and friends. And with two replaced knees, I no longer run, skate, or ski, activities I have loved.
What is the best adaptation you’ve made?
Having more frequent and more extended visits with family and friends. Being free to do unlimited walking, biking, boating, and whacking away in the weeds on a golf course. Remaining peripherally involved with the organization I founded 40 years ago, the American Association for Community Psychiatry.
What is the adaptation you should have made but haven’t been able to?
It would be comforting if I were able to regain the religious faith I had when I was younger and that, at least in part, propelled me to go to divinity school after college and before medical school. However, my scientific training and going through two divorces has relegated me to being a lost ball in the spiritual weeds.
What are you afraid of?
A violent death, such as in a fire (our older son’s family lives in the Pacific Palisades). The devolution of our country.
What are you grateful for?
The parents that I had, my 4 siblings, my wife of 35 years who has miraculously managed to put up with me (I wouldn’t have wanted to put up with me!), our 4 kids, our 10 grandkids, and my friends. Importantly, I’m grateful for having the very ability to experience awe and gratitude.
Speaking of gratitude, thanks very much for putting this survey together. It’s been fun. And thanks to all my classmates who volunteer their time to make our reunions the enriching and enjoyable experiences they are.
With our kids independent, good health, and stable resources , I feel like I am playing with house money – or taking a victory lap. Physical degeneration and death are dreaded and inevitable, but why fear them in advance? Why worry about them before they arrive? I am trying to be sensible about preparing for both, but also keenly aware that nothing I do can forestall them. They will be what they will be.
In my younger life, did I aspire to contribute something lasting and important to the world? Of course. But I know how rare that is, and from tracking family history, how quickly I will be forgotten. We strut and fret our hour upon the stage and then are heard no more. How futile it is to pursue immortality – and what will we care anyway after we are gone? So I am trying to make the most of my remaining years of health and/or money and preparing for their conclusion. I am grateful for a life of comfort and love and good fortune available to very few in this world, and I hope when I am leaving the world, to remember that gratitude.
Rather than answering the specific questions as posed, I thought I’d trace my thoughts on aging chronologically. My father died suddenly at age 53 when I was 17. From this experience, I adopted an attitude that life is short and felt intense pressure to make the most of every minute of my day. Needless to say, this approach to life was quite stressful. What I have learned the older I get is that it’s ok to relax from time to time. Father Time is not going to beat you to death if you take an occasional breather. My training and life as a physician was so intense and all consuming that when I retired, I really took this lesson to heart. At about age 58, I yearned for something to stimulate a greater appreciation of life, and in response the finger of God came down, touched my bladder, and gave me cancer. Nothing focuses the mind regarding appreciation of life more than a diagnosis of cancer. Mercifully, over 12 years, two recurrences, and a boatload of uncomfortable treatments, I am happy to announce that I have been in remission for 5 years, but nothing has given me greater appreciation for life, day by day, than this experience. Aging, for me then, has been a blessing. I remember when I turned 54 and realized that I had outlived my father, not to mention, as the years go by, realizing all the things in my life that my father missed. My mother, at the other end of the spectrum, lived to be 107. She was a remarkable woman with an incredible memory and broad interests and was quite independent until around age 100. Thereafter, Father Time began nibbling away at her—progressive to profound hearing loss that robbed her of the ability to appreciate music, which she loved, watch TV, or go to the theater or movies; a macular bleed which robbed her of sight to the point where she could no longer read—a passion of hers; and progressive frailty that eventually required her to have 24 hour home care. Heartbreakingly, she couldn’t wait for it to be over. So as I age, I work hard at maintaining a healthy lifestyle, do puzzles daily, exercise at the gym and play pickleball but also realize that the clock is ticking and it’s time to start thinking about doing the things on my to do list before I am no longer able. As for death, what troubles me is not fear of the act of dying but of subsequent opportunities lost. I want to know what the future holds, I want to keep learning about the world and its history, I want to know where in the world my grandchildren will end up, and so on. I would prefer not to be nibbled up as my mother was, however, although I suspect I will have no control over this. Overall, I am very content and hope I stay that way. Does this answer your questions?
I enjoyed reading your perspective. Thank you, Gerry.
Well written and rings true.
Old age—alas, that combination of two words seems quite harsh—but, wait! For one thing, old age has given me the freedom of time—largely, an open schedule (it’s called retirement) in which to live as I choose and to consider, at leisure, my relationship with old age. Now that this chapter has been opened, I cannot fail to acknowledge it (that, itself, is one adaptation), so I must ask myself how to proceed, dealing with what is inevitably to come along on the way to the end of all coming, of all being. No, I have no real evidence to support the immortality of the soul with its possible offer of comfort and eternal joy, but books of history, family photos and, yes, graveyards tell me that something of me may stay behind, for a time, after I am gone—in someone’s mind, in someone’s heart. So, for now, I will not worry myself with concerns for immortality, reward or punishment beyond, and with transmigrations, reincarnations. Old age—you are in the room with me now. Let’s negotiate this chapter of the journey.
What adaptations give me positions of strength at this time? Well, certainly, I recognize I do not travel this way on my own. “If you should stand, then who’s to guide you?” (Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia). Yes, who? At times, the ancients—say, Ecclesiastes, Seneca, Boethius offer help. My career in medicine, largely caring for older and chronically ill patients, suffering with an unremitting and progressively debilitating disease, often facing decisions about the end of life, taught me many a lesson. Friends and family who have made this journey have also given me their gifts—insights, wisdom and strength that serve me as beacons on this mysterious path. Time has focused my understanding of how my Father, the personal mentor of longest record, dealt with this chapter, learning from the Depression and WW II, patience, acceptance and uncomplainingly playing by the rules, while keeping his mind active in subjects of interest to him, drawing comfort from his ancient mentors—Abraham, Moses, Proverbs and then, Browning—“Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be. The last of life for which the first was made.” When it was his time, Dad was sad to go, but kept his poise and his wits, accepting what reality made necessary, knowing he had left his mark and provided for his community and those close to him. My own advancing age (not “old!”) has given me the gift of time to gather the best from these mentors that now inform my responses, my adaptations. And, without a doubt, I must admit that whatever ability I might have to favorably adapt is very much conditioned by my good fortune and personal successes, and a loving partner and family, seeming security in material needs, and, for the most part, thus far, quite good health. Old age has yet to take much of that from me. Beyond some modest scattered pains and physical limits and a degree of diminished enthusiasm for some of what energized me before, little has been taken—all praise to the Most High or the somewhat swerving assortment of atoms in my immediate vicinity. ’Tis easier to adapt well from a position of stability, security and calm. One, then, requires less drastic adaptations. One can stay the course. For that, I am grateful.
Another positive adaptation is assuring that I have something to which to look forward each day—another sunrise over the lake, an unexpected rainbow, a gentle wind visualized by the movement of fog, a trout rising to a fly, a new book to read, a birdie made on that par five, sharing pleasures with friends, the joy of a call from the grandkids, my wife’s lovely and loving smile. I suppose that the best adaptation is that of acceptance. Remember the adage, “Don’t sweat the small stuff”? Well, compared with going down some rabbit hole of anxiety and despair, considering the declines coming to us in old age and the ultimate passage to material nonexistence, not sweating it seems to make a lot of sense—an acceptance of reality that keeps many horizons open, keeps your pulse even and steady, and affords moments of return to more youthful moods. Yes, do sweat and pay attention to the big stuff, like making the most of every day, of whatever wits remain to you, of keeping your mind alive, stimulated, exploring, of sharing the love of your family, of your friends, and finding the love that moves the stars and the other planets. “What? Me worry?” I say “Calm your nerves in the face of old age. Keep trying to do your best. Believe in the possibility of joy at any age, and never cease to seek it.” That’s the best adaptation. If you have spent a life trying not to whine too much, don’t change course now. So far that adaptation has done well for me. I pray I am able to keep it up for the duration.
How have I failed to adapt? I will admit that, at times, I do not live up to what I said above, and I let myself grow sad, inconsiderate and a bit ugly. What seems to be resurfacing in our time is the darker side of the damn human race, to use Mr. Clemens’ phrase. Though my remaining time in all this becomes short, this saddens me, outrages me and makes me fearful for the future which my descendants may know. Did I play some role in this outcome? Did my generation fail to heed the warnings well expressed in the records of our species? An honest answer is quite likely a “Yes,” conditioned by the limitations of what can be expected of one individual or even one generation. It seems hard to find an adaptation to escape that judgement, and little time remains.
But, in balance, the optimist in me, surviving, as it has by grace of good fortune, the blessings gifted me by others and some hard work on my own part, tells me I have been adapting pretty well with no specific, critical maladaptation at the moment. Maybe naive of me or indicative of a serious failure of self-examination, so I will keep asking myself that question, and I may get back to you on that later.
I don’t think I fear much at present with regards to old age, but, yes, if I start to sense I am losing the ability to reasonably continue most of what still gives me joy, and still gives me the capacity to share meaningful time with family and friends, to offer even a little back in return for the love and gifts I have received from them and from the world I live in—when I can no longer control my judgements as to right and wrong, gentle and mean spirited, grateful and arrogant—that is what I fear and hope, at all costs, to avoid. I pray I will be able to recognize that moment, if it should come, or to listen well to others if they come to tell me I have turned so sour. I have more for which to be grateful than I can even begin to express, so I will just bask in the pleasure of recollection of all that.
“There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality…Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it…Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains.” Seneca
Keep on truckin’, David.
Hunter was a guy whose finger was on the pulse of the infinite perhaps to the highest degree available to us mud-extruded mortals.
After all these years, I still tear up every time the lyrics to Box of Rain wander though my mind. Every single time.
At age 72 and not in the best of health, Hunter was forced to embark on a solo tour to generate revenue for uncovered medical bills. A sad but oddly fitting chapter in the life of that most American of lyricists, the Walt Whitman of our generation.